Summer Preview: Banana! The Minions expand their empire
Some of the movies’ biggest stars barely speak a word of English, or any other language for that matter. Sure, you can occasionally hear them say “Banana!” or possibly “Smoochy smoochy!” but most of what they say is gibberish. The Minions may be the world’s most popular, and lucrative, foreign language movie stars — even if “Minionese” isn’t an officially recognized language.
This summer, the goggle-wearing yellow ones will return yet again to further expand their sizable empire in “Minions: Rise of Gru” (in theaters July 1). The “Despicable Me” franchise (a fourth is due in 2024) and its “Minions” spinoffs already rank as the highest-grossing animated film franchise ever with more than $3.7 billion in tickets sold worldwide.
That’s a big reason why “Rise of Gru” was held back by Universal Pictures for the last two years during the pandemic. The Minions — a second-banana scenestealing horde of mostly incompetent but fiercely loyal henchmen — have in 12 years become a formidable force and a ubiquitous culture presence.
“There’s a lot of them so they have a kind of power in that they can overwhelm,” says Chris Renaud, producer of “Rise of Gru” and director of the first two “Despicable Me” movies. “It’s like power by wearing you out.”
“There’s a paradox about them,” says Kyle Balda, director of “Rise of Gru,” “Minions” and “Despicable Me 3.” “They want to serve an evil boss of some sort yet there’s nothing evil about them, really. They’re quite good-natured except they like to see others fail a little bit.
They laugh at each other’s misfortune. They’re very flawed, but their flaws end up working out for them. One of the things we often say is: They fail upward.”
Because the Minions started out loosely defined, and their very nature a little mysterious, the franchise has offered them a chance to continually evolve. In 2015’s “Minions,” their backstory got filled in a little; a montage followed them through history and a long line of bosses, from a Tyrannosaurus rex to Napoleon — all of whom the Minions unwittingly sabotage. Some Minions — Kevin, Stewart and Bob — have been isolated like a trio of siblings. “The Rise of Gru” picks up after they meet young Gru, who they call “mini-boss” even though he wants to be taken seriously as a villain.